The kid from Palmer who had no clue where his professional life was heading had made it to the top. Butler couldn’t sleep that first night in the Big Apple because he couldn’t stop smiling.
A reporter for CBS news, Butler also creates video stories for “Fast Draw,” a non-fiction news series that explains the news through animation and is seen by millions of viewers twice a month. His talent for reporting the news and as an artist has made him one of the world’s few non-fiction artists. But his career began long before he made the scene in New York.
 Mitch Butler, right, and John Landis are the creators of 'Fast Draw,' a weekly nonfiction animated series that incorporates easy-to-follow news stories with quick artwork on the CBS Nightly News. Butler, a former Palmer resident, has made a name for himself over the past five years by combining art and journalism. Courtesy photo/CBS News |
As an aspiring writer and artist, Butler said he grew up in a normal family in log house near Palmer, where some of his family still resides.
“There was a lot of woods, fields and glaciers,” he said. “A far cry from where I live now, in mid-town Manhattan.”
Butler graduated Palmer High School in 1989 and decided to follow his two passions: art and journalism. He never suspected the two would eventually cross paths to make him a recognizable name in broadcast news.
“One thing I remember about high school was that my art teacher gave me a quarter and said, ‘Pay me back when I make my first art sale.’ I’ve yet to pay him back.”
At 19, Butler worked briefly behind the scenes at KTVA television, rounding up video tapes and mowing the lawn outside the Anchorage station.
Robert Krulwich of ABC World News was one of Butler’s first role models. Krulwich would visually explain the day’s hot topics, using goofy pictures, props and metaphors to deliver the news.
“He had a knack for using art to explain the news,” Butler said. “I thought, ‘I could do this too.’ I got a chance to meet him and knew everything about his work. Now I’m doing what he does at CBS.”
Butler takes his talent for computer graphic animation and incorporates it into his news copy. Whether hard or soft news, Butler said he tries to make watching the news simple and fun for viewers. He’s done pieces about hurricanes, history segments on the Kentucky Derby and a comical look at super delegates, all found at his Web site, Mitchbutler.com.
“I knew I wanted to do something in broadcasting,” he said. “But I just started in basic animation and studying television. What came of those two things was a career in animation.”
Butler briefly owned a computer graphics firm, the Mitch Butler Co., where he first developed a short animation piece called the “The Smell of Horror,” a 3-D film noir short animation piece he said was received surprisingly well at national film festivals.
“It’s about a creepy guy on a hill that is so lonely, that he calls over repair men to his home to have conversations with. It led to work in New York City during the dot-com boom,” he said.
Researchers from NYU Improv Technology, an animation software company, made Butler an artist in residence where for four years he directed “G.I. Joe” episodes for Hasbro and worked on commercials for Playskool.
“I had fun working on ‘G.I. Joe,’” Butler said. “That was the stuff from childhood I loved.”
Butler moved on to teaching graduate classes in animation and storytelling at schools like New York University, Parsons School of Design and New York’s School of Visual Arts.
“It was my first introduction to being on stage, explaining things to an audience,” he said. “When they started talking to me about a full-time faculty position, I realized I didn’t want to be a teacher. But I did enjoy explaining things, so I took that with me to New York.”
Butler said it was around the same time he remembered watching Robert Krulwich’s storytelling news style and wanted to follow his early mentor. He showed Krulwich his work and the two began creating spots for Krulwich’s ABC World News segments.
“He, of course, was the guy on camera,” Butler said of Krulwich. “When new ideas would surface, he started saying, ‘Why don’t you be the guy on camera?’ It worked out. At the end of last year we created ‘The Fast Draw’ on CBS.”
Butler, along with co-creator Josh Landis, began making nonfiction pieces for “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” “CBS’s Sunday Morning” and “The Early Show.”
“Our goal is to take something relevant and make it understandable,” Butler said. “Everyone can watch it. It’s not just for kids.”
Butler said the episode that has garnered him the most attention was his comedic explanation of what super delegates are, which aired on the “CBS Evening News” in February. Dry erase markers created the scenery as Butler and Landis went through the history of party politics in a “School House Rocks”-type of delivery.
“My partner, Josh, has a great news sense,” he said.
Butler lives halfway between Times Square and Central Park, and said the New York lifestyle is 180 degrees different than the serenity of the Valley.
“When I’m in Alaska and I tell people I live in New York, they say, ‘Wow, how can you live there?’ Funny thing is, when I’m home in New York and say I grew up in Alaska, I hear the same thing,” Butler said. “I’ve learned to not be offended by either.”
Butler said he visits the Valley at least once a year to spend time with his family.
“I love being there,” he said. “I miss the people, the familiarity, the people that I’ve known for so long.”
Last week, Butler visited his father in Palmer, and said he enjoyed being away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Being in front of the camera is still a little intimidating, Butler said, especially in the company of star power.
“It gets a bit strange when there’s people like Katie Couric in front of you,” he said. “But you have to work at being professional and not to be starstruck.”
When not working, Butler said he’s quite the nerd.
“I can make balloon animals, do a little cake decorating,” he said. “A big passion is riding my unicycle. Some of my friends, especially my friends in Alaska, said that won’t impress the women, which makes me a little ashamed of my hobbies.”
With “Fast Draw” contracted to run on CBS for the next few years, Butler said he is fortunate to have found a job that’s unique.
“Non-fiction and animation as a job is a special and weird thing,” he said. “There’s no ad on Craigslist asking for people in this field, so I am very lucky.”
Butler’s advice for future young broadcasters and artists trying to make a career of the two is to take advantage of art school while they can.
“In this world, maybe the top 2 percent could be superstars, or really on top of his game,” he said. “But if you’re not in that area, let’s say you’re in the top 25 percent in two different areas, and you combine them, you can be very successful. Animation and news is the best of two worlds.”
Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.
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